


Fared I Forth Alone

by miera



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-01
Updated: 2006-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-17 16:05:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/178559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miera/pseuds/miera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"A frosty Christmas Eve when the stars were shining / Fared I forth alone where westward falls the hill"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fared I Forth Alone

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by "Noel: 1913," which is included at the end of the story. It's possible I'm wrong about the time difference between Earth and Atlantis.

On Earth, it was approaching Valentine's Day. It was disconcerting.

Elizabeth slipped out of the bustling Christmas party, onto her balcony outside the control room. Reconciling the longer rotation of Atlantis with the Earth calendar had been problematic, especially when factoring in the shorter orbit around the sun. The differences meant they were somewhere around six weeks behind Earth, according to the science team's calculations.

But their adapted calendar had proceeded normally for them, so it didn't feel like they were behind.

The Christmas supplies from Earth had arrived months ago. Elizabeth had ordered them put safely away until needed and gave up for good trying to explain anything resembling the relativity of time to the military requisitions people.

There was a fake pine tree in the gate room, with lights and ornaments. Last year they had adapted an evergreen from the mainland and used their arm patches as decorations. Dinner this year was actual roast beef (Rodney and John insistently referred to it as "roast beast") and potatoes with gravy. The powdered eggnog was declared "vile" but she spotted a number of people adding drops of this or that to make it more palatable. The consensus she absolutely did not overhear was that vodka worked the best. Those who didn't partake of eggnog were sipping the Athosian wine brought over by their guests from the mainland.

The table next to the roast beef was full of cakes, cookies and heaven help her, what apparently was real trifle. People had been squabbling over kitchen resources for two weeks, trying to recreate their favorite desserts from home. Elizabeth finally quelled the bickering by threatening to mandate everyone would get two graham crackers and nothing else.

The air outside was chilly. The seasons on Atlantis weren't easy to tell apart without super hurricanes to distinguish them, but the average temperature was dropping as the planet headed into fall. Grateful she had thought to put on her heavy cable-knit sweater over her blue shirt and jeans, she folded her arms across her chest and looked up at the sky.

Christmas at home hadn't been a big affair for her, especially during those last few years. Often she was in some far part of the world, celebrating the holiday with whoever she was working with at the time. Even when she was home, doctors never got a day off, and Simon always volunteered to be on call so the other physicians in his practice, who were all married, could be with their children. Elizabeth had spent a number of Christmases on the couch with her dog, watching _Die Hard_ by herself.

They were going to show _Die Hard_ later, actually, at her instigation. When John had looked at her, surprised and more than slightly impressed, she shrugged and told him it didn't feel like Christmas without it.

The one tradition she always followed, though, no matter where she was living, was taking a walk outside. Late on Christmas Eve, she would bundle up and walk around the neighborhood, looking at the lights, peeking unabashedly through windows. Sometimes she could see glimpses of other people's holiday parties. Some of the houses were dark, and she would wonder where the occupants were. Someplace warm and sunny? Were they on vacation or with family? Was it a big, Rockwellian festival of generations or a smaller, more intimate gathering?

Were they happy?

She liked it best when it was cold enough for the snow to squeak a little under her boots. The sky would be so clear the stars would look close enough to touch.

Rather like being out here on her balcony. Only the stars were different.

Her walking tradition dated back to being 15 and needing to get away from her family for a while. She'd slipped out the back door of her grandparents' house without being noticed and wandered around their upscale neighborhood by herself in the dark. She felt like an exile, alone out in the night while the rest of the world, it seemed, was indoors and warm and safe and happy.

Perhaps strangely, it hadn't been a depressing thought. She liked being out there, being able to feel like she could see a glimpse of something happening that was much bigger than herself.

The door to the balcony opened quietly behind her, spilling noise and light from the party out into the dark. A tall figure loomed in the doorway for a minute before coming all the way outside.

She had noticed Ronon sitting with his team on her first walk through the party. He and Rodney had been, as usual, competing to prove "he who eats the fastest eats the most." Rodney tended to lose because of his habit of trying to talk while also trying to chew.

Ronon was far more single-minded.

Elizabeth nodded to him once. He just stood next to her, his arms folded over his body in a mirror of her pose. Ordinarily the silence would have made her nervous. Even after several months, she'd had little success figuring out what was going through Ronon's head at any given time. Usually she would just keep guessing, trying to learn him, because he was a puzzle, a challenge, and he was now part of her team so it was her job to be able to read him, to understand him.

Tonight, though, they were all off duty. She had come out here for silence, so she kept it.

Never did she think her silence might prompt him to talk.

"What is the actual point of this holiday?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Didn't Colonel Sheppard explain it to you?"

Ronon gave her a look. "He talked about some holy man who had flying animals, and left presents instead of accepting them. And there was something about a baby born without people having sex?"

She had to laugh. She could just imagine John's attempt at untangling the knot of religious and secular traditions surrounding Christmas. In fact, she remembered John and Aiden trying to explain it to Teyla last year. That hadn't gone very well either. Teyla later talked to Carson, who was much better able to contextualize things for her.

The thought of Aiden made her heart ache for a moment.

Ronon was waiting, she remembered. "There are multiple religions on Earth, and a few of them have holidays centered around this time of year," she began. "One in particular celebrates the birth of a child believed to be an incarnation of God."

Ronon frowned. "Was he an elf?"

That brought her lecture up short. "Um, no. Why do you ask?"

"Sheppard was going on about how he's not an elf. Something about his ears."

Elizabeth chuckled. John did have rather pointy ears. It was a sore subject with him. "No, Jesus wasn't an elf, just a regular human."

"But the parents didn't have sex? How could there be a baby, then?"

She shrugged. "That's kind of the point. It's supposed to be a miracle."

"A living child isn't already a miracle?"

The expression on his face, even more than his words, struck her hard. The realities of life for the people of this galaxy had a way of making a lot of things about Earth feel shamefully indulgent.

"Supposed to be," she said quietly. There was no easy way to explain thousands of years of moral imprecations and cultural taboos regarding sexuality to him, much less the concept of "overpopulation."

Ronon apparently let that mystery go. "So the flying animals...?"

"Reindeer. Santa Claus, the man who brings gifts, uses them to travel. That part is a children's story, a fable. Real reindeer can't actually fly, and Santa Claus is mostly a myth. It's really the adults who buy gifts for children and each other. The presents are a big part of the holiday." She thought of the relentless onslaught of advertisements and sales that started earlier every year. Christmas in the Pegasus Galaxy was, in an odd way, more peaceful than back on Earth.

"Not all of your people are exchanging gifts," he pointed out.

"Some, but not all, no." Elizabeth herself hadn't even considered it. As the expedition leader, she couldn't show favoritism (any more than she already did) and if she bought a gift for one person, she'd have to get something for each of them and, well, she didn't have that kind of time.

That hadn't stopped people from bringing her gifts, and she felt a little guilty about that. Teyla and Halling had brought her a blanket, a token gift from all the Athosians. It was beautiful, and Elizabeth had draped it over the back of the couch in her office. It would come in handy the next time she tried to nap in there. She couldn't sleep with cold feet.

This morning after breakfast, Rodney had come into her office to present her with a DVD set of old MGM musicals. She was more touched than she wanted to admit that Rodney had remembered her throwaway comment about liking the old-fashioned movie musicals. She couldn't even remember the context that had brought the subject up at this point. But then, you could hardly qualify as a genius with a bad memory.

At lunch, Radek had left her with three bars of the highest quality chocolate available on Earth. She learned later he had bought an entire case and was giving them out as presents, but it appeared she was the only one who had gotten three.

This evening, when she went back to her quarters to change into casual clothes for the party, in order to set the right tone for the evening, she found the silliest of her presents on her bed. It was a bag of Oreos, covered in a bright red bow almost as large as the bag. The note from John said "Use in case of comfort food emergencies."

Ronon reached into a pocket and took something long and narrow out of it, holding it out to her. It was a sheathed knife. Elizabeth looked up at him curiously. "It's for you. For... Christmas."

The irony of receiving a knife for a holiday that was supposed to be about peace was something she could never hope to explain to him, so Elizabeth kept her lips as steady as possible to conceal her desire to laugh. "Thank you." She took the knife and looked at the handle, then glanced up at him. "Is there a message in this gift?" she asked, half-teasing and half not.

Ronon seemed to divine immediately what she was thinking, which was a little unnerving. "You're not weak," he said seriously.

He came from a military background. Leaders were probably the strongest and bravest of his people. Elizabeth had wondered in the past what he made of a civilian woman, unarmed at that, being in command. She thought his willingness to listen to her came more from following John's lead than from any recognition of her authority.

Maybe she'd been wrong about that.

"But you should be ready to defend yourself."

Then again, maybe not.

"Honestly, I have no idea how to use this," she confessed to him, curious to see how he would react to that admission.

Ronon didn't seem surprised. "I can teach you," he said, with just a touch of arrogant confidence.

She'd gone through a self-defense course back on Earth before they left. She had doubted at the time it would do her any good in the long run. In the middle of a fight, one long-past week of practice wasn't going to come to her aid.

She had a feeling Ronon's training would not be so easily forgotten. Or that he would let her forget.

John would probably have a stroke if he found out Ronon was teaching her to fight. He'd been bugging her for months about needing to train all the civilians basic combat moves, including her. Especially her, his body language had practically screamed. She knew it made sense. His instinct, everyone's instinct, was to protect her, and she hardly wanted other people being put in danger because she was helpless. But there had never been time, it seemed, to get around to spending hours rehearsing moves in the gym.

Of course, whenever John brought up the subject, it usually devolved into a fight about her carrying a gun. She'd gone 15 rounds with Colonel Sumner over that one, and then had to go through the same arguments again with John, and even with Stephen Caldwell once or twice. Despite the radical alteration of some of her feelings (prejudices, if she was being honest) about the military, she refused to carry a gun. The message was too wrong. Guns were equated with the soldiers, and the point of her leading this expedition was that they weren't soldiers first but second and when necessary – even though "when necessary" meant all the time here in Pegasus.

It might be an irrelevant distinction to anyone but her, but Elizabeth wasn't surrendering on this point.

But a knife wasn't a gun. The connotations were different. The message was different.

Maybe she was different now. Or maybe it was because it wasn't her military commander who was bringing it up.

Elizabeth looked up at Ronon. "Okay." She had made time to come out here on the balcony tonight. She could make time for this. She tucked the sheath into a pocket carefully.

She expected him to ask her when they would start but he just nodded his head and leaned against the railing, looking up at the spire of the tower and the stars above them. It lowered the height difference between them, at least a little.

She envied him, she realized unexpectedly. Even though it had to be immensely difficult, going through what he'd been through, and living here among strangers whose customs were unfamiliar and unfathomable a lot of the time, she envied Ronon's simplicity. He had no doubts about himself, what he could and could not do. He spoke directly to everyone, including her. She had to weigh her words so much of the time, consider what to say and how to express a meaning that wasn't always, or even usually, what she felt.

He had a luxury in that. Elizabeth wondered if he understood it.

"So, this holiday is supposed to be celebrated with family, right?" he asked. Then he raised his eyebrows. "Then why are you out here by yourself?"

Alright, so sometimes the directness threw her, either because she wasn't used to it or because she didn't expect someone who often felt so alien to her to be able read her so well. Elizabeth folded her arms again and shrugged. "It's a tradition for me. I always take a walk by myself on this night."

"Why?"

She thought about it for a moment. There were politic answers she could give, and there were ways to express her reasons that would sound plausible and smooth out the underlying truth.

She opted for blunt instead, regardless of how callous she might sound. "Sometimes it's more comfortable for me to be on the outside looking in."

Emotions flashed across his face, a mix of grief and longing, anger and compassion, all tangled up together.

There were no words she could possibly say at that moment, so Elizabeth reached out and placed a hand on his arm, up near his shoulder.

He glanced at her, his jaw tightening slightly, but his eyes were as open and unguarded as she'd ever seen them. She squeezed her fingers into his shoulder in understanding.

The door opened again. Elizabeth dropped her hand from Ronon's arm unhurriedly and turned.

John stopped short when he saw them and even though he was shadowed against the lights from inside, she could picture the flicker of surprise going over his face. Elizabeth read the hesitation in his body as he came through the doors. It was only a moment, but she saw it.

She was sure Ronon did, too.

John recovered smoothly. "Hey, we're going to put the movie on," he said, waving behind him.

Elizabeth cocked her head to the side. "Are you coming to the movie?" she asked Ronon.

"What's it about?" he asked, standing up straight.

"You'll like it. It's about a man whose wife and friends are taken hostage by thieves who don't know he's in the same place. He has to sneak around and get rid of the thieves himself without getting caught. I call it a One Man Army movie."

Ronon grinned in his slightly feral way and followed her inside.

***  
 **Noël: Christmas Eve 1913**

 _A frosty Christmas Eve when the stars were shining  
Fared I forth alone where westward falls the hill,  
And from many a village in the water’d valley  
Distant music reach’d me, peals of bells a-ringing:  
The constellated sounds ran sprinkling on earth’s floor  
As the dark vault above with stars was spangled o’er.  
Then sped my thoughts to keep that first Christmas of all  
When the shepherds watching by their folds ere the dawn  
Heard music in the fields and marveling could not tell  
Whether it were angels or the bright stars singing.  
Now blessed be the towers that crown England so fair  
That stand up strong in prayer unto God for our souls  
Blessed be their founders (said I) an’ our country folk  
Who are ringing for Christ in the belfries tonight  
With arms lifted to clutch the rattling ropes that race  
Into the dark above and the mad romping din.  
But to me heard afar it was starry music  
Angels’ song, comforting as the comfort of Christ  
When he spake tenderley to his sorrowful flock:  
The old words came to me by the riches of time  
Mellow’d and transfigured as I stood on the hill  
Heark’ning in the aspect of th’ eternal silence._

\-- Robert Bridges, Poet Laureate, United Kingdom (1913)  



End file.
